Vayne is currently the ONLY Marksman among the top 24 most banned champions in Plat+ games. Skilled players and the balance team clearly have very different views on the oppressiveness of the role. How do you reconcile continued Marksmen nerfs with the fact that the role is never banned at high elo?
I don't think you can measure effectiveness of the entire role by looking at banning rates that way. It's just as easy to make the argument that marksmen are all so similar that unless you are banning a particular ability (as in say Sivir) that you won't really move the needle. If you ban Lucian, they still have Graves. If you ban Kog, they still have Trist. This isn't the case in say assassins, where if you ban a favorite pick you might encourage them to switch to a tank or some other kind of champion. In other words, banning often has a lot to do with outliers and really we don't want a bunch of outliers. I don't think you'd be happier if Vayne, Cait and Twitch were all among the top 24 most banned champions, but then all the others still felt really weak.
Each team is always going to have a Marksman, so even if they were dramatically underpowered, they would still get played. In fact, that makes it really hard to define what underpowered really means in that context. Does it mean their kills are too low? Does it mean their deaths are too high? Does it mean that the mage or fighter have more influence on the outcome of the game? I do feel like it is pretty clear, just from admittedly subjective feedback, that many Marksman players feel like there is currently a lack of satisfaction in playing their role. That is something we do want to address. I just hope that for some MM players, the threshold doesn't have to be skewed too far in the MM favor in order for them to feel like they are really important to the game.
Each team is always going to have a Marksman, so even if they were dramatically underpowered, they would still get played. In fact, that makes it really hard to define what underpowered really means in that context. Does it mean their kills are too low? Does it mean their deaths are too high? Does it mean that the mage or fighter have more influence on the outcome of the game? I do feel like it is pretty clear, just from admittedly subjective feedback, that many Marksman players feel like there is currently a lack of satisfaction in playing their role. That is something we do want to address. I just hope that for some MM players, the threshold doesn't have to be skewed too far in the MM favor in order for them to feel like they are really important to the game.
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